We started when
the sun first poked the horizon. The dogs ran ahead. Border Collies always do.

Run ahead.

We paused our
walk on the top of a large sand dune and we stood and watched the splendor of
it rising over the ocean.

The Sun.

It rose quickly
and everything for a while was an orange hue.

When it rose
proper the skies were blue

They still are.

Blue.

Piercingly blue.

It is nice to be
home but it is bloody cold.

It is freezing.

I am at the beach house in
Melbourne and it is delightful to be sprawled amongst my family. Tom is here as
well as my brother and his kids – one amongst who is my favourite niece
Georgie.

She made me write that.

That she was one amongst the
sprawled. George likes being written about.

I have been reading the
Australian broadsheet newspaper and they are very good. The weekend versions
have a lot of different sections and the news is detailed and both local and
global. The Free Press in Australia is opinionated and often editorials are
clearly politically aligned but there are still good journalists writing nice
stuff.

One article I read was about
youth suicide and it was a piece that made specific mention of Australia and Singapore
and China. All three countries have terrible statistical records of young
people killing themselves.

Singapore is not my home
however it is the place where I live.

I am greatly saddened that
kids of any country perceive death to be preferable to life.

That’s a lot of Pain.

There were some statistics
and comments in the article that were sourced from an organization called the
Samaritans of Singapore - SOS. There were also some numbers provided by the
World Health Organization. I found them alarming and despairing. Despite the
hustle and bustle and bright lights of Singapore there is an intensity and sadness
about the place.

There is a lot of pressure to
achieve.

According to the World
Health Organization more than one million people commit suicide each year and
every year. Deaths by suicide per annum are greater than all the casualties of
wars and murders combined. I did not know this and I find such statistics to be
horrific.

It is beyond tragic.

Life can be a bitch sometimes
but we need to live it and cherish it and I don't think that anyone who commits
suicide wants to die - they just do not want to live. They want the pain to
stop and they do not know how to deal with it. The banishment of pain is
something we all have to endure at times but surely death by one's own hand is
not the solution.

The Samaritans of
Singapore have been around since 1969. They provide a 24-hour intervention
hotline for the public that is manned by trained volunteers. They also provide
a 'Postvention' service that offers grief and bereavement counseling for the
affected families and friends of people who have committed suicide.

When people kill themselves
they may end their own pain but it must be inherited by those that they
leave behind - albeit in a different form. The sadness of such an impact is
beyond my comprehension. I would imagine that this is a dark and a perhaps
unrecoverable legacy of anguish and shock and devastation.

It would be torment and
torture.

I have lost family and
friends but never before have I been touched by anyone who has suicided. I hope
that I never am.

I am not sure how I would
cope.

The Patrons of
the Samaritans of Singapore are Government Ministers from the
Department of Culture, Community and Youth. There were four hundred and eighty
seven suicides recorded in Singapore in 2012 and it is estimated that up to
five times that number attempted the act. Perhaps more. The Samaritans of
Singapore reported that this was a thirty percent increase on the previous
year.

Suicide is on the rise on the
Island.

The statistic from the SOS
report that I found to be the saddest was that there was an increase by nearly
eighty percent of suicides and attempted suicides in the 20 to 29 year age
bracket. Young adults who are so sad they no longer wish to live.

The loss of a child under
such circumstances is incomprehensible to me.

The loss of a child under any
circumstances is an abomination.

The depths of such grief and
sorrow and despair that must be experienced by the parents of a child that has
committed suicide must be unfathomable.

How could they ever recover
from such a loss?

SOS also reported that their
intervention hotline received approximately 40,000 calls last year and there
were a similar number the year before. That is a lot of despondent and
distressed people. Suicides constitute over two percent of all deaths in Singapore.
It is also listed as a criminal offense on the Island. Survivors of suicide
attempts face a jail term of up to one year as well as a substantial fine.

Can a punishment in itself be
a crime?

I think so in this case.

The American poet Sylvia
Plath committed suicide in 1963. She was thirty one years old. She is buried in
a tiny village that sits on a hillside in the county of Yorkshire - in England.
The village is the home of my ancestors and Plath is amongst my favorite poets.
Poor Sylvia, she was very much tormented and sad but way she placed words together
was her escape and it was her gift to the world.

She didn’t want to be here.

I have visited her grave. It
is well kept and neat. Plath's poetry is alluring and exquisite but her torment
can be read in nearly all her prose.

It is as haunting as it is
harrowing.

Amongst the copious beautiful
and sad and despondent works that Plath scribed there are many indications that
she was not happy in this world. She was tortured and it reflected in her art.
Here are some examples:

“The trouble
was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”

“I must get
my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.”

“I desire
the things that will destroy me in the end.”

“I couldn’t
see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”

“People or
stars regard me sadly, I disappoint them.”

“I have
taken a pill to kill the thin papery feeling.”

“The thought
that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.”

My how that woman could write
and how ethereally she portrayed her agony of living. However there is no
beauty in death. I find it terribly sad that there are so many people out there
who seem so unable to find something to live for that they feel compelled to
take their own lives.

Plath penned the words that
are the title of this post in her poem "Elm". She wrote:

"I have suffered the
atrocity of sunsets".

A sunrise invariably follows
a sunset and a new day always dawns. Each dawn should be embraced - even it is
so cold that your face turns numb and your lips turn blue.

Look at the beauty of the
sand and the sea and the sun. Lap up the love and company of family. Delight in
the happiness of the border collies.